Back in 1984/85 I was on the FCO’s Aviation Desk for a year, working mainly on Transatlantic air services issues (who could fly when and where and for how much), and in particular on the diplomatic ramifications of Freddie Laker’s antitrust lawsuit against British Airways and other carriers.

The core issue here was that the threat of an award of massive triple damages against BA in the US courts was delaying unpleasantly the Thatcher Government’s plans for privatising the airline. So lots of personal and eventually successful engagement took place between Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan (and even more whirring activity deep in the US and UK bureaucratic boiler-rooms) to try to find a solution.

On one occasion amidst these interesting questions we in the FCO had fallen out with officials in the Department of Transport led by Nicholas Ridley. My boss John Gray and I cranked up a lengthy tetchy draft letter to him from the Foreign Secretary, aiming magisterially to get our various points across formally at Cabinet level in the hope that he and his officials would accept the rigour of our dialectic, and fold. 

We walked round this magnificent document for approval to the next man up the policy chain, the then Assistant Under-Secretary Robin O’Neill (who 20 years later was to be spotted letter-signing). 

He perused it with disdain. Then he took out an elegant fountain pen and put a thick and unwavering black line through the draft. 

He inserted instead something like this:

"Dear Nicholas,

It appears that our officials can not agree on a couple of points to do with [issue]. Perhaps we could have a word?

Yours ever,

Geoffrey "

"Ministers really do not like it when officials try to dump a problem in their laps", he explained helpfully.

Off we went.

Maybe not much sadder. But Wiser.